New Thinking: Accents

Episode description

How Manc are the Gallaghers? John Gallagher hears about the results of a project to map accents in the city talking to Prof Rob Drummond. In Northumbria Dr Robert McKenzie has discovered that a Northern accent can cost you marks at school and job opportunities.

However you speak, your accent reveals something about you. Dr John Gallagher talks to two researchers whose projects explore the variation in accents across England, and the way those accents shape our place in society.

Rob Drummond is Reader in Sociolinguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University. With the help of an Accent Van and archive recordings, his project Manchester Voices maps the accents of Greater Manchester, documenting people’s relationships with their own accent and charting how accents have changed over time, from lost rhotic Rs to the made-up Manchester accent of the Gallagher brothers. https://www.manchestervoices.org/

You can find an earlier New Thinking conversation with Rob about setting up the project in an episode called City Talk which is available in the New Research collection on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Robert McKenzie is Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics at Northumbria University. His project Speaking of Prejudice analyses both explicit and implicit attitudes towards accents in the South of England compared to the North, revealing that prejudices still exist towards particular accents and the effect on school progress and job opportunities. https://hosting.northumbria.ac.uk/languageattitudesengland/

This podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI.

Producer: Tim Bano